Run
by grumkinsnark
Summary: Eliot's no stranger to leaving. It's easy, and it's what he's good at.


**Run**

* * *

**I. 1992**

**Oklahoma City, Oklahoma**

Eliot Spencer is eighteen when he decides to join the army, fed up with small town life and the promise of going no further than owning his daddy's hardware store. He puts Oklahoma City down on the enlistment sheet as his place of birth, but when he's asked by his fellow privates where he's from, he just says the base.

Home was his buddy Kenny's house where Mrs. Winston made lasagna for dinner and affectionately ruffled his hair when he said _please_ and _thank you_ and _you look nice, Mrs. Winston_.

Home was the cooking semester of home ec, which he first took because the teacher was hot but which he continued because it was something he was actually good at.

Home was Aimee, who loved him in spite of all his flaws, who kissed every injury he got on the football field, who could make him forget every hardship he'd had in life with a single smile. Home was when she said she'd wait for him, forever.

Home _wasn't_ his house, where his mother was too busy drinking to take care of him and his sister and his father spent sixteen hours a day at his shop trying to make ends meet, where he might as well have had no parents at all.

Home is the army base, now, and he has no intention of going back. He allows himself to keep the graduation photo of him, Aimee, and Kenny with grins on their faces because _dude, we actually finished high school_ and _Aimee, I got this ring for you_.

* * *

**II. 1998**

**Langley, Virginia**

Eliot Spencer is twenty-four when he's summoned to the CIA headquarters and recruited to participate in a clandestine operation. They don't say "black ops," because that's not an officially sanctioned department, but he's not stupid. He doesn't have a choice, and before he knows it he's telling his company that he received honorable discharge.

It's a lie, and thirty-six hours later he's on a jet plane headed for Uzbekistan.

He's scary good at his job, the precise reason the CIA picked him, and despite being uncertain about the whole thing, he excels. He learns fight styles from adversaries as he battles them, he teaches himself to handle any gun, he has an entire rack of knives specifically for him. Black Ops isn't a division, but they name him a de facto Commander anyway.

Morbidly, he keeps record of each person he kills for the first six months. But soon, each time he looks in the mirror he sees less of himself, sees less and less life in his eyes, can see blood on his hands even when he's scrubbed them raw. He doesn't keep a log after that. They come to him at night, ghosts, with as much mercy as he'd shown them.

He adopts his ninety minutes of rest rule during his years with the agency, because constant fatigue means he never has the time for nightmares.

He defects, once, after an IED blows up half his crew and maims the rest, taking a flight in secrecy back to Oklahoma. He shows up at the farm, _her_ farm, with nothing but the clothes on his back, the burdens of war, and the promise they'd given each other. He sees her atop her bay mare, feels a smile creep up on his face the likes of which he hasn't had since he left in the first place. She dismounts, and the man he'd assumed was a stable hand draws her into a deep kiss, and the sun glints off her diamond ring and Eliot's heart turns to stone.

* * *

**III. 2003**

**Taunggyi, Myanmar**

Eliot Spencer is twenty-nine when Damien Moreau crosses his path offering relief from the U.S. government's chokehold on him. Eliot agrees, because Moreau is charismatic and true to his word. He dubs Eliot no longer a U.S. asset, but rather a retrieval specialist, and says that as long as Eliot gets what he's contracted for, he can work however he wants to. He kills to begin with because he's used to it by now, because it's easy, because he no longer cringes when his hands twist a man's neck or he fucks up a guy so badly his face is unrecognizable.

He nearly dies his first year under Moreau's watch, sent to retrieve some vital manuscript. He prides himself on being aware of his surroundings at all times, but he doesn't notice the sniper until the bullet tears through his arm. He's lucky, he realizes even as the blood pours from his artery, for if he hadn't tripped at that last second, the bullet would have gone straight through his heart.

He stops the bleeding but the wound still gets infected, and the septicemia has him a hair's breadth from death. Had the old Myanma woman not taken pity on him, he'd have perished in agonizing pain.

His status is elevated after that, like a sick rite of passage, and though he's used to people obeying his demands, it's still unnerving to see missions carried out upon a single word from him. It pleases Moreau, however, his ingenuity and improvisation on jobs, and eventually Eliot prefers to take fewer and fewer people with him for retrievals as they get in the way. Moreau agrees to let him work solo, and Eliot's production multiplies. Living in his own head is torture, but having to tote around subordinates who think too much of themselves is worse. He used to get his injuries that way.

He doesn't actually leave Moreau until that final job, final _test_, where he's told to retrieve a priceless emerald. It's not his usual catch, but Moreau commanded it, so he did. Or tried to, anyway. By the time he got to where the emerald was housed, a blonde figure vanished into the darkness with the stone clutched in its hand and Eliot took the fall for the theft, nearly getting captured by the Sierra Leone guerillas. He'd had no choice but to shoot his way out. At the time, all he'd seen was soldiers in his way, guns, and reacted accordingly. It wasn't until he was recounting it all to Moreau—_don't fail me again, Spencer, you know what I do to those who fail…you have a sister, don't you?_—that he realized the soldiers were children, brainwashed to be killers.

He looked in the mirror for the first time in years that night, and saw nothing.

* * *

**IV. 2009**

**Los Angeles, California**

Eliot is thirty-five when the team parts ways and he sets up shop with the CIA again. He and Vance fall into sync like nothing happened, they wreak havoc upon their targets in Pakistan and Mongolia and Russia. Eliot gets shot four times during the missions, but steadfastly refuses Vance's repeated offers for a gun. Finally, Vance gives up and arms Eliot with knives instead. Eliot never uses those either, disarming as many adversaries with his hands as Vance does with his bullets.

They fulfill the government's requests with aplomb, recording remarkably few casualties and succeeding in every assignment they're given. Eliot doesn't miss the not-so-furtive glances that his unit members give him when they see his efficiency, his cold and calculated methods. No doubt they've heard his reputation, heard his past. In fact, on more than one occasion he'd caught them muttering about whether they can even trust him given said past.

He ignores them, every time, but throws himself more into every job, determined to get through them all with the least emotion possible. The less he thinks about his team, the better. It was fun while it lasted, but they don't need him and he doesn't need them.

* * *

**V. 2014**

**Hrodna, Belarus**

They've been working together for two years now, the three of them, but still haven't gotten all the kinks out yet. The absence of Nate and Sophie, of having two extra people for each con, still wears on them every day, and sometimes they not only don't excel on the job, but almost fail at it entirely. Hardison is getting better at the whole grifting thing, but still tends to go over the top, and it's hard for Eliot to both grift _and_ punch out obstacles or for Parker to thieve _and_ schmooze at a party. The emotional stuff they can deal with, but from a practical standpoint it sucks.

Their next job has them en route to Belarus to take down an international crime syndicate, their biggest job so far, and as usual Parker is the point person, pulling upon all her tricks from Sophie in order to charm the mark. It works, allowing Hardison to join her with his cell phone ready to clone. It's all going smoothly, but Eliot should have known better than to think their luck would continue.

Turns out the mark had been playing them all along, having the software to recognize their faces. Because it had gone so easily, because they had let Hardison infiltrate their systems, none had accounted for the possibility that the mark had done it on _purpose_. Before he can even come up with a plan of counterattack, his comms are awash with yells and grunts, and then—

"Don't bother trying to find them, Mr. Spencer, because you won't. Leave now and you can be on your way."

It gives him the perfect escape, he could walk away clean without any repercussions, get back to how he was before. A mercenary, out for only himself, racking up millions and getting to kick the shit out of people in the process. It's an easy choice.

_These people you're with, _General Flores had asked him once, _would you leave any of them behind? Ever?_

Eliot Spencer is forty when he stays.


End file.
